No amount of arguing convinces the mayor to close the beaches for the coming
holiday. Commercialism and greed reign for the 4th of July weekend:

It's going to be one of the best summers we've ever had. Now,
if you fellas are concerned about the beaches, you do whatever you have
to to make them safe. But those beaches will be open for this weekend!

As the mayor drives off in his car, a "ONE WAY" road sign
- positioned above his head on the far side of the road and pointing in
the direction he is heading - accentuates his single-minded stubbornness.

Thousands of people arrive for the 4th of July holiday weekend and the beaches,
roads and arcade game areas are jammed with people. [During this sequence,
the second major beach scene, musical scores of other films are heard in tribute
- music from a crowd scene in John Ford's The Quiet
Man (1952), ragtime music reminiscent of The Sting (1973),
and sounds of "In the Good Ole Summertime."] Ferries unload carloads of people.
(One boy plays a video, shoot-'em-up game titled KILLER SHARK.) Brody sets
up defense communications on the holiday beach, and has boats and helicopters
patrolling the shore. A television reporter (author Peter Benchley in a brief
cameo) speaks directly into a camera as he strolls on the beach:

Amity Island has long been known for its clean air, clear
water, and beautiful white sand beaches. But in recent days, a cloud has
appeared on the horizon of this beautiful resort community - a cloud in
the shape of a killer shark.

No one enters the water, until the nervous mayor encourages one of his local
town pals (and his family) to be the first to demonstrate that all is well
and everyone can safely enter the water. Brody urges his older son Michael
(Chris Rebello) and his friends to launch their sailboat in a protected, supposedly
safer pond. As tourists splash in the water, the mayor reassures listeners
in an interview on the beach:

I'm pleased and happy to repeat the news that we have in fact caught
and killed a large predator that supposedly injured some bathers. But
as you can see, it's a beautiful day, the beaches are opened, and people are
having a wonderful time. Amity, as you know, means friendship.

One boat spots a giant, black fin shape swimming straight
into a group of swimmers. Whistles are blown and the alert is sounded -
hundreds panic and run screaming to the shore, and a few of the bathers
are trampled. But the
"shark" is only a fake - a large cardboard fin propelled in the water as
a hoax by boys wearing half-wetsuits and snorkeling masks. The cry of 'wolf'
has been heard and everyone is relieved it is only a silly prank.

This shark fin is unreal, but a second one in the pond-estuary
is not. A redheaded artist/easel painter screams that another dark fin
has been sighted cutting through the water in the pond. It is moving towards
the group of boys in the sailboat and toward an unidentified man (Ted Grossman)
in a red rowboat. At first her cries of "Shark!" aren't heeded, but then Chief Brody rushes
protectively towards his son when Ellen reminds him: "Michael's in the pond."
The shark attacks the man in the rowboat and turns it over, throwing him
into the water. The turbulence from the rowboat attack capsizes the sailboat
and throws the boys into the water. The shark bites off the man's leg, claiming
yet another victim. Michael, who witnesses the attack, is immobilized in
the water. The unseen shark seems to brush past him as it heads back to sea.
Brody reaches the scene in time to pull his son to the shore, unharmed but
in shock. Michael is taken to the hospital for treatment after his narrow
escape. [The fate of the victim in the rowboat is left dangling.]

This incident leads to a confrontation in the hospital corridor
between Brody and Mayor Vaughn. Brody demands that he sign a voucher to
hire a contractor, seaman Quint, to kill the shark: "...sign this and we're gonna pay that guy
what he wants." The mayor is shaken by the latest shark incident, and quickly
scribbles his signature on the piece of paper to authorize the hunt. Quint's
dialogue from the next scene - in Quint's shack the next day, overlaps: "$10,000.
$200 a day, whether I catch him or not."

The salty seaman accepts the offer from Brody and Hooper: "Get the men off
my back, so I don't have any more of this zoning crap." The walls of Quint's
shack are lined with an exhibit of the jaws of sharks (boiled white) that
he has killed. Known for his "colorful" foul language and loner
attitude, crusty Quint offers a toast with his own homemade whiskey: "Here's
to swimmin' with bow-legged women." Hooper offers to accompany him for the
gargantuan task, but Quint declines:

Quint: I'm not talkin' about pleasure boatin' or day sailin'. I'm
talkin' about workin' for a livin'. I'm talkin' about sharkin'.
Hooper: Well I'm not talkin' about hookin' some poor dog fish or sand shark.
I'm talkin' about findin' a Great White.

Quint further tests Hooper's knowledge of knot-tying (a
sheepshank), and insults his soft and tender "city hands" that have been counting money all
his life. Hooper lashes back, fed-up with Quint's attitude and values: "I
don't need this working-class hero crap." Quint suggests: "Maybe I should
go alone." Because the job is Brody's charter and uses Quint's vessel the Orca,
Quint reluctantly agrees to let the two men accompany him, but under his
terms. Quint assigns duties - Brody will be a "mate," and Hooper
will be "master pilot." Quint will be the "captain," of course.

Tensions are high as preparations are made to leave. Quint makes fun of
Hooper's inexperience and his underwater, portable shark cage:

Quint: What do ya got here? A portable shower or a monkey cage?
Hooper: Anti-shark cage.
Quint: Anti-shark cage. You go inside the cage? Cage goes in the water? You
go in the water? Shark's in the water? Our shark? (singing) 'Farewell and
adieu to you fair Spanish ladies...'

The real hero of the film, Brody goes to sea in an effort
to regain his self-esteem and overcome his fear of the water, even though
he fears it and hates boating. While saying goodbye to her husband, Ellen
pampers him at dockside with "Did you take your Dramamine?"- she has also packed an extra pair of
glasses, black socks, zinc oxide, and Blistex. She detests the macho Quint
and is repulsed by his salty, foul-mouthed posturing ("He scares me"). Brody
tells her that his kids should be told that he's going fishing. Ellen hugs
Brody at the dock, and then runs away from Quint's boat as Quint hurries him
along and directs his obscene, insulting lyrics toward her: "Break it up,
will ya, Chief. Daylight's wasted...Come on, Chief. This isn't no Boy Scout
picnic. See you got your rubbers! Ha, ha, ha. (reciting) 'Here lies the body
of Mary Lee. Died at the age of one hundred and three. For fifteen years,
she kept her virginity. Not a bad record for this vicinity.'" As they push
out to sea from the harbor, their boat is framed by the toothy jawbones of
a shark hanging in Quint's window.

Out on the open ocean, Brody is given the distasteful tasks,
such as "chumming"
(throwing spoiled, bloody meat - shark bait - over the side of the boat) to
attract the shark. Brody covers his mouth with his handkerchief sprinkled
with Old Spice to counteract the smell. Seated into a fishing chair on the
deck with a large-reeled fishing rod in his hands, Quint criticizes modern,
scientific methods to fish (and presumably to kill sharks) - taking a jab
at all the expensive gear that Hooper has brought out: "Nowadays, these kids,
they take out everything, radar, sonar, electric toothbrushes, ha, ha." To
match Quint's macho crushing of his beer can, Hooper singlehandedly crushes
his own white plastic coffee cup. Foreshadowing future action, Quint mentions
that the shark might even eat the compressed air tanks kept on the deck: "I
don't know what that blasted shark is gonna do with it - might eat it, I
suppose. Seen one eat a rockin' chair one time."

The master fisherman cautiously straps himself into his
fishing chair when something bites his fishing line, and he hoists the
gigantic reel/pole between his legs - an obvious reference to his maleness.
Practicing knot-tying, Brody yells: "Hey I got it" - just as the line is taken out. Quint barks orders
at Hooper on the bridge as they maneuver the boat around. The monster shark
displays uncanny intelligence after being hooked: "He's very smart or very
dumb...He's a smart, big fish. He's down under the boat. Keep it steady now.
I got something very big." When they lose the fish that Hooper thought was
only a game fish ("It's a tuna or swordfish...maybe a marlin or a sting ray"),
Quint argues that only a shark could bite through piano wire. He insults Hooper's
intelligence with a superior attitude: "Don't you tell me my business again.
You get back on the bridge...it proves that you wealthy college boys don't
have the education enough to admit when you're wrong." Hooper slyly puts him
down in less obvious ways - he makes a funny face behind Quint's back as the
captain walks away, and comically speaks in a W. C. Fields accent from the
bridge: "I don't have to take this abuse much longer."

Later, while Hooper plays solitaire with himself on the
deck, Quint (from the top mast) orders the lowly Brody to put out more
chum. As the chief scoops out bucketfuls of bloody slop, humorously griping
to his mates: "Come down
and chum some of this s---," a monstrous shark rises out of the water and
nearly takes his hand off. This is the film's first full glimpse of the shark,
an hour and twenty minutes into the film - a truly spine-tingling moment.
Brody cannot believe the size of the creature, and with a classic, practical
understatement tells Quint his assessment:

You're gonna need a bigger boat.

Awestruck, they all view the full-sized, massive shark circling
the boat. Quint estimates it is 25 feet long: "Three tons of him." He prepares his harpoon-gun,
as the radio receives a call from Ellen. Without summoning Brody, Quint rapidly
tells her that her husband is too busy to talk: "He's fishin'. He just caught
a couple of stripers. We'll bring him in for dinner. We won't be long. We
haven't seen anything yet. Over and out." Just in time, Hooper attaches a
line to the first of a series of heavy yellow barrels, as Quint fires a shiny,
silver harpoon from his gun into the side of the beast. The first barrel is
pulled through the water - the intention is to tire the shark out and to keep
track of its location. Although the sun is setting, Quint - on the boat's
pulpit - insists that they stay on the hunt, but Brody wants to make contact
with land: "Yeah, but we could radio in and get a bigger boat out here."

When dusk comes, the men wait and sit in the boat's dark, cramped and swaying
interior cabin. While Brody listens (and is seen in cut-away shots), Quint
and Hooper improvisationally share tales and mementos of their physical battle
scars - Quint's permanent bumb on the head (during St. Patty's day in Boston),
Hooper's moray eel scar on his arm, Quint's permanently unextended arm due
to an arm-wrestling match, Hooper's bull shark scrape on his leg, Quint's
thresher shark scar, etc. Brody takes a peek at his own appendix scar - without
sharing the gory details.

Then they turn to their emotional scars, revealing their
personalities. Hooper speaks about his "broken heart" from a failed romance with Mary Ellen
Moffett. Quint's tale of injury is the most terrifying, because he was scarred
for life and turned his existence into a personal vendetta against sharks.
A tattoo on his arm was removed - "U.S.S. Indianapolis" - but the internal
scars remained.

In a long, memorable monologue, Quint tells how he was a sailor in World
War II, and his carrier was the one that delivered the A-bomb to Japan and
then was en route home. It was sunk in twelve minutes by torpedoes from a
Japanese submarine and about 1,100 men went into the shark-infested water
for about 4 days. As he remembers the grisly, hideous story of the ill-fated
USS Indianapolis' crew during the World War II-era, he recalls the
attack of swarming sharks that began a half hour later - 800 sailors perished
(and only 316 men survived):

Didn't see the first shark for about
half an hour - a tiger - thirteen footer. You know how you know that when
you're in the water, Chief? You tell by lookin' from the dorsal to the
tail. What we didn't know was our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress
signal had been sent. They didn't even list us overdue for a week. Very
first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin'. So we formed ourselves into tight
groups. You know, it was kinda like old squares in the battle like that
you see in the calendar named 'The Battle of Waterloo.' And the idea
was, the shark comes to the nearest man and he starts poundin' and hollerin'
and screamin'. Sometimes the shark go away. Sometimes he wouldn't go away.
Sometimes that shark, he looks right into ya, right into your eyes. Y'know,
the thing about a shark, he's got lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eyes.
When he comes after ya, he doesn't seem to be livin' until he bites ya,
and those black eyes roll over white, and then - aww, then you hear that
terrible high-pitch screamin', the ocean turns red, and in spite of all
the poundin' and the hollerin', they all come in and rip ya to pieces.
You know, by the end of that first dawn, we lost a hundred men. I don't
know how many sharks, maybe a thousand. I don't know how many men. They
averaged six an hour. On Thursday morning, Chief, I bumped into a friend
of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player. Boatswain's mate.
I thought he was asleep. I reached over to wake him up. Bobbed up, down
in the water just like a kinda top. Upended. Well, he'd been bitten in
half below the waist. Noon the fifth day, Mr. Hooper, a Lockheed Ventura
saw us. He swung in low and he saw us. He was a young pilot, a lot younger
than Mr. Hooper. Anyway, he saw us and he come in low and three hours later,
a big fat PBY [seaplane] comes down and start to pick us up. You know,
that was the time I was most frightened - waitin' for my turn. I'll never
put on a life jacket again. So, eleven hundred men went in the water, three
hundred and sixteen men come out, and the sharks took the rest, June the
29th, 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb.

[Historical Notes: The historical sinking that occurred in the early
morning (pre-dawn) of a different date - July 30th, 1945 - not June
29th, 1945, varies from Quint's exaggerated account about shark attacks.
After delivering the makings for atomic bomb "Little Boy" in a crate (with its nuclear
ingredients in a canister) to the Pacific atoll of Tinian in the Philippine
Sea for eventual use against Japan at Hiroshima, the cruiser (on its return)
had left Guam two days earlier and was enroute to Leyte (in the Philippines)
when it was successfully torpedoed by Japanese submarine I-58. The ship capsized
and sank in about twelve minutes. Estimates by Capt. Charles McVay put the
number that "got off the ship" at between five and six hundred. The senior
medical officer Capt. Lewis Haynes estimated that seven or eight hundred
men may have made it out of the ship. The Indianapolis was due to reach
Leyte on July 31, 1945 but no report was ever made when the ship didn't arrive
on schedule. In fact, on August 2, 1945 when a plane on routine patrol accidentally
came across the survivors, a report still had not been filed.

All air and surface units capable of rescue operations were dispatched to
the scene at once, and the surrounding waters were thoroughly searched for
survivors. Upon completion of the day and night search days later, 316 men
were rescued by the Cecil J Doyle out of the crew of 1,199. According
to McVay, "All the people who did survive were apparently in quite good physical
condition. They had some people with fractured arms or fractured ankles, but
on the whole those who survived the four days in the water were in very good
shape." Most of those who had died perished from sunstroke (exposure and
exhaustion and other malicious elements), salt poisoning by drinking salt
water, a deadly oil slick, salt water ulcers, and drowning (for lack of life
vests). Some experienced fever and delirium from being submerged in the water
for a long period of time, and others just went crazy from drinking the salt
water and suffering from diarrhea and dehydration. Reports of the majority dying
from shark attacks aren't warranted. According to Capt. Haynes, "in the
entire 110 hours I was in the water I did not see a man attacked by a shark.
However, the destroyers that picked up the bodies afterwards found a large
number of those bodies. In the report I read 56 bodies were mutilated, Maybe
the sharks were satisfied with the dead; they didn't have to bite the living."]

Five days later, Quint had survived, but few others had
escaped the mouths of the ravenous sharks. [His story foreshadows his own
demise, for the shark has returned to finish the job and consume another
sea 'monster'.] Just after Quint finishes his sobering story - the reason
for his personal, maniacal search for the monster - and they loudly sing
drunken choruses together, the boat rests quietly on the moonlit surface
of the sea. The calm is interrupted by a long shot that shows the yellow
barrel ominously approaching from a distance. Targeting the boat, the shark
rams into it with all its weight, pounding the wooden hull, flooding the
cabin and the engine, starting a minor fire, and extinguishing the lights.
Brody and Hooper mutually realize that their mission is more dangerous
than they ever imagined. Quint fires his rifle into the murky water, and
Hooper questions his sanity: "What are you doing? Don't waste
your time, Quint. Come on." Brody grabs his handgun - as a brilliant shooting
star streaks behind him (from right to left) in the twilight sky. Another
faint shooting star appears (from left to right) in the upper left portion
of the sky during the very next shot - a long-view of their boat floating
on the moon-lit water.

But then, everything is quiet again until morning, when
repairs are made on the engine. The yellow barrel suddenly appears on the
stern. Hooper suggests a strategy to Quint as they both haul in the rope: "If we can get close enough,
I've got things on board that'll kill it." Suddenly, the giant shark surfaces
right in front of them, just when they thought the rope was slack.

Brody has seen enough and tries to summon aid from the Coast
Guard by using the radio to make an urgent distress phone call. [The voice
of the coast guard is director Steven Spielberg.] But Quint wrecks the
boat's radio by smashing it with a baseball bat. Brody thinks Quint is
crazy: "That's great! That's
just great! Now where the hell are we, huh? You're certifiable, Quint, do
you know that?!" But they don't have time to finish the argument. Hooper alerts
them: "Boys! Oh boys. I think he's come back for his noon feeding!" [Quint
is like a modern-day, vengeful Ahab, from Melville's novel Moby Dick, who is in single-minded, obsessive pursuit of the species that killed his shipmates. A parallel can easily be drawn between Ahab's great white whale and Quint's great white shark.]

The shark is harpooned with another barrel, and the shark takes the boat
for a second run. Brody watches from behind the cabin's window - the image
of the barrel hurtling along in the water is reflected on the glass and sweeps
water over his face. With a damaged engine, the Orca cannot be run
at full throttle and strains to keep up with the "fast fish." In the battle
with the shark, it is harpooned again, and Brody empties his handgun full
of ineffectual bullets into the shark's side. Quint gloats prematurely about
his expected catch:

Back home we got a taxidermy man. He's gonna have a heart attack
when he sees what I brung him!

But the shark battles back, eats the line, pulls the ship around, and tows
the Orca backwards, filling the stern of the ship (and the engine compartments)
with water. The boat begins to break up and sink. Amazingly, the shark dives
with three barrels, and then chases the sinking boat as it races toward shallower
water. When Quint accelerates the Orca as he heads to land, its engine's
bearings burn up. The engine quits in a cloud of black smoke - and then the
boat slowly takes on water and lists precariously. Quint passes out life preservers
to his glum companions.

At the end of their rope, Hooper proposes a last ditch effort
- diving overboard with his scuba gear in his protective shark cage and
attempting to spear the monstrous shark in the mouth with a poisonous syringe
(filled with strychnine nitrate). Quint's disbelief is followed by Hooper's
yelled question: "You
got any better suggestions?" and their assembly of the four sides of the cage's
frame (all of them are visualized behind the cage - imprisoned or fenced in
by the shark!). As he is about to be lowered under the water in the shark
cage, he fearfully cannot muster enough saliva to de-fog the inside of his
mask: "I got no spit." Hooper fails to see the shark coming up from behind
- the beast knocks the poisonous spear out of his hands to the ocean bottom,
and rips open the bars of the cage. The gigantic shark rams the cage again
and again, until it has a gaping hole. Miraculously, Hopper swims out of
the twisted bars of the cage and hides behind an underwater rock when the
shark retreats momentarily.

Desperately trying to retrieve the cage, Brody and Quint finally bring it
to the surface - the battered cage is empty and they fear that Hooper is dead.
The shark then turns its attention toward the boat, rising-breaking out of
the water, smashing down on the stern's transom, and capsizing the boat on
its side. Both Brody and Quint struggle to stay on their feet, as objects
from the boat fly toward the shark. Screaming, Quint slides down the slippery
deck into the open jaws of the monster Giant Great White - kicking his feet
to prevent the inevitable. He is bitten in half - and blood spurts from his
mouth. Quint stabs at its eyes with a splintered piece of the deck as he is
swallowed whole and devoured by the killer shark in a horrifying scene. [In Peter Benchley's original novel, Quint's body was tangled in the harpoon line attached to the great white shark and he was dragged down to drown - very similar to the demise of Captain Ahab in Melville's Moby Dick].

Brody is left to do battle with the monster. The menacing
shark's man-eating jaws smash through the cabin's port windows several
times. With a last-gasp courageous offensive, Chief Brody heaves one of
Hooper's compressed air tank cylinders into the monster's mouth. He eyes
the shark from the top mast of the sinking boat (the only part of the boat
not completely underwater) as it swims away and then circles around for
the final kill. Brody grabs a rifle and then climbs up as high as possible
on the boat's sagging mast as he prepares to shoot the explosive oxygen
canister lodged in its teeth. He does little damage trying to spear the
shark's head. Clinging for life, with the remnants of the boat only a few
feet above the water, Brody prays that the shark will show him the tank
in its mouth in its final attack: "Show me the tank." He
takes aim and fires shot after shot at the oncoming shark:

Smile, you son of a bitch.

One of his last shots hits the target, violently exploding the target. Part
of the bloody shark's carcass is blown to bits all over the water surface.
The rest sinks in a blur of red blood and body parts to the bottom - with
an accompanying deathcry. [Note: Spielberg recycled the killer truck's death cry from Duel (1971) - Jaws' "companion film" about
another relentless creature. The prehistoric roar was also sampled from The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954).] Squawking seagulls feast on the remains.

Brody breathes a sigh of relief, and then can't believe
his eyes when he sees a miraculously-unharmed Hooper swim to the surface
after the explosion. Assuming Hooper was dead, Brody shakes his head and
laughs. Hooper asks about Quint's fate and learns from Brody that Quint
didn't make it with a simple
"No" and a head shake.

They kick toward shore on floating yellow barrels (a makeshift raft) following
the successful slaughter of the seemingly un-killable shark. They exchange
the last lines of the film - Brody has conquered his irrational, aqua-phobic
fear:

Brody: I used to hate the water.
Hooper (laughing): I can't imagine why.